BOOKS.
MR. MORISON'S " GIBBON."*
Jr must be very carping criticism indeed which could welcome otherwise than warmly Mr. J. C. Morison's sketch of England's greatest historian. For readers who have not yet made acquaint- ance with the celebrated Memoirs on which this monograph is, perforce, moulded—for the class of readers, in fact, to whom the series to which this monograph belongs is addressed, Mr. Morison's little book may be regarded as almost perfect. By a time- honoured misinterpretation of Scripture, these readers are de- scribed by the editor of that series as men who have to run as they read, and in plainer phrase, as men whose leisure is scanty. We wish Mr. John Morley and his coadjutors the suceess which they deserve, but we have some fear that a certain amount of dis- appointment may await them, unless indeed their series attracts the attention of that large and ever-increasing body of readers whom the form and pressure of the age are summoning everywhere into the presence of the examiner. But time alone can decide Gibbon. By J. Cotter Morison. London: Macmillan and Co. 1878. whether this will prove to be the case, and we may safely spare our forecasts. Meanwhile, we can heartily recommend Mr. Morison's book as a succinct and judicious guide to the famous Memoirs and to the still more famous Decline and Fall, and if we venture to suggest some points in Gibbon's character and writings which, as it appears to us, might have been handled with a little more fullness, and perhaps, too, with a little more freshness, by Mr. Morison, we must also candidly admit that we have only read his book once, and that, too, rather rapidly. It is possible, therefore, and even probable, that we may uninten- tionally treat as an omission some trait or criticism which is im- plicitly or even explicitly to be found in this volume. If we do, we beg to apologise beforehand to Mr. Morison, and in addition to the general commendation which we have already freely given to his work, we shall take care before we finish to make such a quotation from it as shall justify, and more than justify, our praise.
Edward Gibbon, says Guizot, was a born historian and man of letters, just as Descartes was a born philosopher, Turenne a born soldier, and Bossuet a born orator. The dispute which this assertion may provoke is, as Gibbon himself has noticed, a metaphysical, or rather, a verbal one. We have his own word for it that from his earliest days be aspired to write history, and it was in jest, probably, rather than in earnest, that he ascribed this choice to "the assiduous perusal of the Universal History, as the octavo volumes successively appeared, since philosophy has exploded all innate ideas and natural propensities." Anyhow, and from whatever cause, history very early became Gibbon's vocation, and he laboured in it for many years, with an unresting and unhasting perseverance which secured the success it merited. But Gibbon was no mere book- worm, unable to breathe with freedom any air but that of his library. He was fond of society, fond of cards, and fond of the pleasures of the table. "Good madeira is as necessary to my health," he wrote, "as it is to my reputa- tion." The one good thing he detested was active exercise. His experience with the Militia fortified his health, as he admitted, but the lesson was thrown away upon him. This "kindly Epicurean," as Mr. Morison very justly calls him, lived in defiance of all the rules of hygiene, and faced the inevitable gout, which punished him for his transgressions, with the serenity of a Stoic. It is only fair to Gibbon to say that his errors in this way were due to ignorance rather than self-indulgence, and so great is the power which the human body has of accommodating itself to any kind of living, that there seems no reason for believing that Gibbon's regular irregularity would have shortened his life. His premature death, for premature we must call it, was due, as is well known, to the astounding carelessness with which he neglected a local affection, because it caused him no pain and little inconvenience, till he was past the aid of surgery. But he must have had a wonderful stomach indeed, and we dwell upon this apparently irrelevant topic be- cause although we wish, of course, that what we are going to say should be taken cum grano, we think that, without being too fanciful or too materialistic, we may try to show that some of Gibbon's intellectual peculiarities may be fairly attributed to his corporeal organisation. Briefly and roughly, then, and we hope with not too much .vulgarity, Gibbon may be described as a man who was all brain and stomach. He had kindly and affectionate feelings for his benefactress, Mrs. Porter, and for his friends Holroyd and Deyverdun, and it would be wrong, and indeed absurd, to say that he had no heart. He liked and loved in a tepid sort of way those of his fellow-creatures whom he found to be agreeable. Do not even the " publicans " the same ? But he was a cold-blooded animal, at the best. "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son," is a phrase which classes a man as a lover. "I submitted to the order of nature, and my grief was soothed by the conscious satisfaction that I had discharged all the duties of filial piety," is a phrase which classes a man as a son. We must guard ourselves from letting it be thought that we blame Gibbon for either of these balanced sentences. We do nothing of the kind. We merely note them as a proof that he was not warm-blooded, and as there is something painful in seeming even to treat with ridicule the last of these quaintly turned periods, we will quote another, from the same lathe unmistakably, and with no tragic undertone to mar our amusement. Gibbon in the Militia was as much out of place as a dolphin in a saw-pit. He felt the absurdity of his position keenly, and sighed, as he says, for his proper station in society and letters,—" But as often as I hinted a wish of resigning, my fetters were riveted by the friendly en- treaties of the colonel, the parental authority of the major, and my own regard for the honour and welfare of the battalion." Here, again, we are not disp3sed to blame Gibbon for his docility, but it is not hard, we imagine, to detect in the lukewarm char- acter which this and the previous quotations indicate, the causa causans of that want of sympathy with human suffering and that want of sympathy with human liberty which are the two great blots in Gibbon's immortal history. "The mightiest man," said Niebuhr, "whose lifetime has co- incided with my own "—and as Goethe and Napoleon were also Niebuhr's contemporaries, this was saying a great deal—" was Mirabeau." Well, Mirabeau was the antithesis of Gibbon in some respects. He was not cold-blooded enough, and it is in- structive and amusing to read his fiery comment on the latter's
magnum opus :—
" Je n'ai jamais pu lire son livre,' he writes to Sir S. Romilly, sans m'dtonner fftt 4crit en anglais ; ii cheque instant fdtais tente. de m'adresser a M. Gibbon, et de lui dire, ' Vous, un Anglais ? son! Vous ne retes point! Cette admiration pour un empire oil il n'y a pas un soul homme qui sit le droit de se dire libre, cette philosophie effeMinde qui donne plus d'dloges an luxe et aux plaisirs qu'aux vertus, co style toujours eldgant et jamais energique, annoncent tout au plus resclave, resclave d'un Electeur de Hanovre." There is exaggeration, no doubt, in this bouncing bit of decla- mation, but a critic who could seriously set himself to work out the idea which Mirabeau has here sketched so roughly would find his account in so doing, and the criticism which the great orator passes on Gibbon's style will serve to recall us to Mr. Morison's book. We hardly think that enough is said there on this interesting subject, and on the still more interesting subject of Gibbon's irony. Was this irony, indeed, the "master-spell," which Byron
called it, or was it what Villemain said that it too often was, " une expression lourde et maladroite ?" Personally, we should
like to hold a brief against the Frenchman, and believe most potently that there is much, very much, to be said in favour of what he is pleased to call "les lourdes epigrammes de Gibbon," as contrasted with" les fleches legeres deco brillant genie [Voltaire]." "Wit I have none," said Gibbon of himself; but he had a terrible substitute for wit, and we could well have spared from Mr. Morison's book the long quotations which he has given of the historian's narrative style, for some specimens of those flashes of grim humour, and of those strokes of irony, now dry and sly, and anon terrific in their pregnant saga- city, which are, after all, the salt of Gibbon's monumental work, and the savour which secures its immortality. We are not quite sure, too, whether Mr. Morison has quite hit
the bull's-eye in his account of the attitude of Gibbon's mind
towards religion. Some very fine and very true things he has said on this topic, but nothing, we think, so neat and entirely fair as this of Sainte-Beuve's :—" Ne lui demandez pas plus de chaleur, ni de sympathie, pour cet ordre de sentiments on de verites ; il a du lettre chinois, dans sa maniere d'apprecier les religions." It is time, however, that we should cease to make exceptions, and redeem our promise. We do so with real plea- sure and genuine admiration, but in a book so full of admirable passages as is Mr. Morison's, it is likely enough that we have not selected the best. We feel, however, that the one which we have selected is abundantly sufficient, as we have already said, to justify, and more than justify, the praise which we have gladly given to a capital little book :— " The difference between the Church in the Catacombs and the Church in the palaces at Constantinople and Ravenna, measures the difference between Gibbon's treatment of early Christian history and his treatment of ecclesiastical history. Just as the simple-hearted emotions of God-fearing men were a puzzle and irritation to him, so ho was completely at home in exposing the intrigues of courtly Bishops and the metaphysics of theological controversy. His mode of dealing with Church matters from this point onward is hardly ever unfair, and has given rise to few protestations. He has not succeeded in pleasing everybody. What Church historian ever does ? But he is candid, im- partial, and discerning. His account of the conversion of 'Constantine is remarkably just, and he is more generous to the first Christian Empe- ror than Niebuhr or Neander. He plunges into the Arian controversy with manifest delight, and has given in a few pages one of the clearest and most memorable resumes of that great struggle. But it is when he comes to the hero of that struggle, to an historic character who can be seen with clearness, that he shows his wonted tact and insight. A great man hardly ever fails to awaken Gibbon into admiration and sym- pathy. The 'great Athanasius,' as he often calls him caught his eye at once, and the impulse to draw a fine character promptly silenced any prejudices which might interfere with faithful portraiture. 'Athanasins stands out more grandly in Gibbon than in the pages of ecclesiastical historians,' Dr. Newman has said,—a judge whose competence will not be questioned."
We have no space for more, and regret that we have not; for the conclusion of this paragraph is even more eloquent than its com- mencement. We sincerely hope that Mr. Morison's successors will go and do no worse than he has done.
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